Kathryn A. LaTour, Ph.D., is an associate professor of services marketing at the School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University (kal276@cornell.edu). She is a consumer psychologist focusing on how consumers remember and learn from their consumption experiences. Her current research involves understanding how expertise is developed within the context of wine.

Lewis P. Carbone (“Lou”) is a chief experience officer at Experience Engineering, a consulting company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that works with many Fortune 500 companies on the design of their experience offerings (http://www.expeng.com) (lcarbone@expeng.com) He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Thiel College, Greenville, PA.

]]>https://managementink.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/listen-to-the-podcast-on-cornell-hospitality-quarterlys-2014-best-article-award-winner/feed/0managementinkcqx coverklatourlou-carbone-lgPreview SAGE’s Newest Business Offering: SAGE Business Researcherhttps://managementink.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/preview-sages-newest-business-offering-sage-business-researcher/
https://managementink.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/preview-sages-newest-business-offering-sage-business-researcher/#commentsFri, 27 Mar 2015 09:00:51 +0000http://managementink.wordpress.com/?p=13378]]>This month SAGE launched a new online library product for business students and practitioners: SAGE Business Researcher. More thorough than a newspaper article and more timely than a scholarly journal, SAGE Business Researcher publishes bi-weekly reports written by experienced journalists on the most pressing issues in business and management.

The following is excerpted from the issue “Doing Business in India.”

Cultural Differences Confront Foreigners
By Madhusmita Bora

“You will always be offered at least a cup of tea”

In a country as diverse and as big as India, navigating bureaucracy, red tape and infrastructure hurdles aren’t the only challenges foreign investors and businesses face. To thrive in the country, outsiders must acquaint themselves with India’s cultural quirks.

Hospitality

Unlike in the West, getting down to business right away is not the Indian way. Indians take pride in their hospitality. In business dealings, it’s best to reciprocate the goodwill.

“You will always be offered at least a cup of tea before a discussion or a meeting takes place,” Kugelman says. “My advice is to take up the offer.”

A cup of tea often serves as the best icebreaker, he adds. Somewhere down the line you will most certainly get invited to homes of colleagues for a meal with the family; fostering such personal interaction can be key to long-lasting business relationships.

Stretchable Time

One of India’s quirks is the notion of time. The day always starts late.

Ranjini Manian—author of “Doing Business in India for Dummies”—says Indian employees are hardworking, but they don’t necessarily show up at work on time and are not efficient with time management. “You have to come to terms with India’s flexible working hours,” she says. “Unlike the West, there’s no rush or hurry to get things done. We are human ‘beings,’ not human ‘doings.’”

But, despite the late arrivals, work always gets done, Manian says.

Workplace Hierarchy

Indians maintain a strong sense of hierarchy at the workplace, just as they do at home.
The top bosses are often looked upon as father figures. Most Indian employees require hand-holding and cajoling when on the job. Emotion is a huge factor in business, Manian says.

Bosses in India are viewed more as benevolent dictators looking out for their employees and teams than as colleagues, Manian says. She says it is important for managers to set goals, remove hurdles through discussions and take an interest in employees inside and outside of work in order to get the best out of them.

Practice Patience

Most Westerners expect immediate feedback in business dealings and negotiations and find that they often get frustrated dealing with their Indian counterparts, wrote Eugene M. Makar in his book “An American’s Guide to Doing Business in India.”

“Be patient,” Makar counseled. “Traditional Indians are reluctant to say no and can be polite and courteous to a fault.”

In recent years, some employers, researchers and policymakers have raised concerns about a shortage of skilled workers in the United States. In some instances, the supposed shortage takes the form of poor literacy and numeracy skills among young people making the transition from school to work. In others cases, employers have complained about an insufficient supply of technically-trained workers, while policymakers have voiced concerns about a dearth of students pursuing science, technology and mathematics (STEM) fields. Related to possible shortages at the aggregate level is the potential problem of mismatches between the skills workers have and those demanded by firms. These concerns, if valid, have important implications for macroeconomic policy as well as the long run standard of living of U.S. workers.

In the March 2015 issue of the ILR Review, we publish a Symposium consisting of three papers studying different aspects of these questions. In papers by Peter Cappelli and by Katharine Abraham, the authors provide evidence that leads one to question whether there is indeed a shortage of skilled workers and whether there is an increasing mismatch between the supply of and the demand for skills. The third paper in our Symposium, by Werner Eichhorst, Núria Rodriguez-Planas, Ricarda Schmidl, and Klaus F. Zimmermann, addresses one of the issues posed by Cappelli: how can we better integrate young people into the labor market? It provides international evidence on policies regarding vocational education and training, which of course don’t just affect youth, but young people are disproportionately served by such policies. This Symposium provides important new evidence on skills and labor market outcomes that will be of great interest to those concerned with the sluggish labor market beginning with the Great Recession.

]]>https://managementink.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/is-there-a-shortage-of-skilled-workers/feed/0managementinkcubicle-farm-107096-mILR_72ppiRGB_powerpointSubmit Your Research to Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiationhttps://managementink.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/submit-your-research-to-journal-of-strategic-contracting-and-negotiation/
https://managementink.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/submit-your-research-to-journal-of-strategic-contracting-and-negotiation/#commentsMon, 23 Mar 2015 15:19:53 +0000http://managementink.wordpress.com/?p=13447]]>We are pleased to announce a new journal launching in spring 2015, Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation, the official journal of the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM).

The journal welcomes submissions concerning theory, research and the practice of strategic contracting and negotiation. Multidisciplinary in nature, Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation welcomes articles from a wide range of disciplines. Possible submissions include articles on the following:

Papers that speak to the complexity of relational contracting

Papers that provide insights into performance based contracts

Papers that advance our understanding of contracting under complexity and ambiguity

Papers that explore the practices of negotiation as an ongoing process (not just something that happened until a contract is signed)

Different perspectives on which developmental approach is the best to tackle the problems of the poor have been debated, while change agents have been trying to address this issue in various ways. The answer lies in finding solutions to more fundamental questions including: What are some of the best ways to assist the poor in developing countries; which development strategies have better chances of success in a particular context and why; what are the strengths and limitations of these social change approaches; and what is the way forward?

Professor Steven G. Anderson, Director of School of Social Work at Michigan State University, draws upon his four decades of expertise as academician as well as practitioner and attempts to answer these questions in his latest book, New Strategies for Social Innovation: Market-Based Approaches for Assisting the Poor. His book takes the readers through four broad social development approaches that emphasize diverse market-based strategies to improve the life of disadvantaged groups. The book contains seven chapters and is just above three hundred pages in length. The chapters are organized around the approaches described by the author and towards the end an attempt is made to integrate these overarching approaches along with a comparative analysis.

In attending the 2010 “Convergence: Managing + Designing” workshop at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, we were struck with a particular question. Isn’t “managing as designing” (or “design thinking” for some folks) simply all about aesthetics? If so, what does this mean for managers and their organizations?

Were there findings that were surprising to you?

In researching for this essay, we were struck by the mix of opinions and research on how well managers and organizational systems could rely on “design” and using non-rational forms of problem-solving. More recent thinking has suggested that organizations today really need to incorporate novel, less-familiar ways of defining and generating solutions for problems.

But there are also arguments that the management education and the reward systems in organizations are all set up to focus on rationally getting to the bottom-line through selecting from pre-determined options. Also, even though design thinking seems to be a pretty popular way to approach problems in organizations these days, it still hasn’t been defined clearly, and is still limited to only a few key adopters. We tried to take in all perspectives saying that 1) we agree that new ways of seeing problems and their impacts are needed 2) using art-based forms of defining problems and generating solutions provides insight into things that are usually hard to see and talk about 3) this relies on aesthetic knowledge – or the ‘feel’ of a problem for the people involved – and therefore on engaging our bodily senses and 4) not very many organizations are set up to draw on this kind of knowledge based in what we see, hear, touch, smell, and even taste.

How do you see this study influencing future research and/or practice?

We hope that our research into this provides a more concise and meaningful definition of design thinking. We believe that at its core, design thinking is about generating and using aesthetic knowledge to define a problem and generate appropriate solutions to it. This means that when designers try to translate their practice for managers, they need to be up front about how important the body and its senses are for problem-solving. This also means that managers and the entire organizational system need to acknowledge where the body gets devalued or is made invisible at work. If an organization wants to adopt design thinking, then it needs to lay a lot of ground work to do so successfully. For organizational researchers, this means that it is important to focus on the body when trying to study complex problem-solving and decision-making. At some level, we all study what is meaningful for the human beings who make up organizations, and how people use their bodies will always be an important aspect of that meaning-making.

John Paul Stephens is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. He pursues research on the felt experience of organizing, in terms of the emotional characteristics of high-quality relationships at work and the aesthetic experience of coordinating as a group. He received his PhD in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan.

Brodie J. Boland is a management consultant based in Toronto. His research interests are primarily in the areas of institutional change, social movements, and ecological sustainability. He earned his PhD in organizational behavior from Case Western Reserve University.

The ABS Academic Journal Guide 2015, published in February, is based upon peer review, editorial and expert judgments following the evaluation of many hundreds of publications, and is informed by statistical information relating to citation. It is a guide to the range, subject matter and relative quality of over 1,400 global journals in which business and management academics publish their research. SAGE continues to grow in the ABS Academic Journal Guide with 3 leading SAGE society journals now being awarded the 4* ranking of world elite in business journals. These journals are:

In today’s world, eating out is serious business. And Christel Lane’s new book, The Cultivation of Taste, is a serious—and engaging—scholarly investigation into the business of the culinary industry. Broadly, her comparative analysis of the world of fine-dining chefs and top restaurants in Britain and Germany is a study of the contemporary social organization and business of taste. It unites arguments from organizational theory, the sociology of culture, and economic sociology. Lane, a sociologist, takes the reader on a behind-the-scenes tour, spanning organizational and industry structures, the occupational careers and attitudes of elite chefs, and the taste-making power of gastronomic guides, namely the prestigious Michelin Guide. Her choice of Britain and Germany as case studies was a purposeful one; both are newcomers to fine dining and equally smaller than the French sector. Yet, despite lacking rich histories of haute cuisine, both have seen stratospheric public interest in home-grown fine dining—and all that neo–fine-dining entails in the 21st century—in the last few decades.

In theorizing the differences between the development of fine dining in the two countries, Lane offers both a macro-level study of institutional change within the field of European gastronomy and a meso-level investigation of organizational logics and repertoires of action among the chefs who inhabit this unique social world. This will likely be relevant for neo-institutionalists in regard to logics and inhabited institutionalism, as well as speak to organizational ecologists interested in category spanning. Lane relies primarily on Boltanski and Thevenot’s (2006) forms of “worth,” principles of evaluation that define what is appropriate, or not, in different realms of social life. Many of these conceptions of value are in conflict with one another here, such as tensions between creativity and profit. While it does not break much new theoretical ground for organization scholars, the book offers an in-depth look at how diversity in logics structures organizational entities and competing orders of worth in a hot cultural industry.

]]>https://managementink.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/book-review-the-cultivation-of-taste-chefs-and-the-organization-of-fine-dining/feed/0managementinkBook0199651655ASQ_v60n1_Mar2015_cover.inddNo texting, plz! :)https://managementink.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/no-texting-plz/
https://managementink.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/no-texting-plz/#commentsWed, 11 Mar 2015 09:00:31 +0000http://managementink.wordpress.com/?p=13354]]>It can be discouraging for instructors who, after taking the time to prepare a lesson plan, find their students texting rather than taking notes in class. Educators across all disciplines and state lines are faced with the dilemma of how to respond. Is it a sign of disrespect or simply the burgeoning of a new generational divide?

A closer look at the numbers shows that the issue isn’t limited to a few problem students. A study conducted by Barney McCoy of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found that of the 777 students surveyed, more than 80% admitted to using their phone for non-academic related reasons during class. Undergraduates were the heaviest users, reaching for their phones an average of 11 times per school day, while graduate students came in at an average of 4 uses. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly Editor Melinda Knight discusses this issue in her editorial entitled “What to Do About Texting?”

Right before the first required oral presentation in this class, I asked everyone once again to turn phones off and give full attention to each speaker. As I was saying this, one student, whom I had previously asked to stop texting on several occasions, continued to text away until I stopped speaking all together. Usually, this kind of dramatic action will help make everyone aware of the problem, yet for the rest of the semester I had only limited success in convincing students that texting during class and especially when others were giving presentations was not professional behavior. Worse yet, I continually had to answer the same questions from students who did not hear what we had previously discussed because of texting. Perhaps the apparent lack of respect for everyone, instructor and students, is what has bothered me the most about this problem.

SAGE is looking to commission original business case studies. Please get in touch if you would like to write or submit a case!

SAGE Business Cases (SBC) is a digital collection of cases from across the range of Business & Management disciplines. Sold around the world directly to academic libraries, SBC will include cases that can be used for a wide range of pedagogical uses, from illustrating core business and management skills in the classroom to independent student projects. Scheduled to launch in Fall 2015, SBC will be delivered on SAGE’s digital library platform, SAGE Knowledge, which will allow for cases to be integrated with SAGE’s leading journal, book, reference, and video content.

What SAGE is looking for:

Well-written, dynamic cases that expose students to real-world business problems.

Cases can be written for the undergraduate or graduate level.

Cases can be based on field research or written using publically available sources.

Teaching notes to ensure effective classroom use.

1,500-5,000 words in length.

Benefits of submitting your case:

Peer review of your case.

Honorarium paid when your case is accepted for publication.

Detailed metadata ensures your case is easily found and used by students and academics.